09/02/2018
PIKE RIVER, QC, CANADA - A very different perspective on pendency of NAFTA talks emerges from a stop in this farming community astride the highway linking the south environs of Montreal to the area adjacent to the international border with the United States. For perhaps 35 or so klicks (kilometers) down hwy 35 and then hwy 133 the pure agricultural livelihood of the localities is palpable. And the air is clean and there is little evidence anywhere of that decadent strip-mall land development policy suite. (It's also so scenic, mountains on the vista, Lake Champlain lurking in the vibes....).
Recall this is the world's longest undefended international border. The actual border is marked by just a couple of short, stout cement posts. That's it. No barbed wire, no military emplacements, the tracks of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys long since grown over.
The dairy industry in Canada, with its strong presence in Quebec, has long been under what Canadians know as "supply management." But so has the U.S. dairy industry toiled under government regulatory schemes. As the WSJ reported today the NAFTA talks underway are "unlikely to fundamentally alter long-running and entrenched government involvement in the industry on both sides of the border."
Maybe Pike River suggests a different path. The Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor - a very heavily important link in trade between the two countries - is badly in need of replacement. Canada is moving forward with a new bridge, the Gordie Howe Int'l Bridge, solely at its own expense. The old bridge's American private owners, consistent with their record of self-interest in preserving their quasi-monopoly, have tried just about everything short of dynamite to stop the new project. Want to see a major new bridge done magnificently well?
A new Pont Champlain is rising in Montreal. As a person who, as a child aspired to become a civil engineer, I might get carried away....but the bridge, still in construction, is breathtaking, breathtaking, nearly beyond words.
So, rather than practice rather self-evident obstinance regarding the bridges in Detroit, couldn't the Trump Administration propose becoming a partner in the new bridge project? That's a concession. In return, get from Ottawa two things. One, the 3.25 percent import growth that would have been in effect under the TPP. And, a six-month hard deadline for a cross-border "working group" to identify and plan for implementing new airborne export opportunities. Re**er freighter aircraft to airlift as much dairy as is in over-supply to places around the world that, uh, maybe are places where there are hungry people amongst the populace? Or any wildly innovative and new idea, which just might work, to import new demand and meet it by exporting dairy product. We can convene the working group at my most favored Starbucks cafe in Montreal - there's always plenty of good milk and other dairy products here, and there's no need to declare anything and no border.
[Sept. 1, 2018]
(Quotation from "Why Milk Matters in U.S.-Canada Trade Feud", Heather Haddon and Paul Vieira, Sept. 1, 2018)
See also, newchamplain.ca.
